Work Text:
and here's a strange thing,
your life could end up changing,
while you're dancing …
through
Fiyero and Feldspur arrive in the Emerald City to pandemonium.
It’s complete and utter chaos. People are screaming, hiding, whispered words, lies, about her slipping from their lips as they close doors and shutter windows, as they drop their food and toys and souvenirs in the street, uncaring where they land as they make their escape.
By the time he reaches the steps of the Emerald Palace, the whole city is empty, desolate, the streets wet with rain and littered with ruin.
He climbs quickly off of Feldspur’s back, patting the horse and murmuring that he’ll be right back.
There are voices, raised, panicked, from inside the palace, and Fiyero takes the stairs two at a time, his eyes scanning the bodies filling the main foyer as his heart tries its best to beat right out of his chest.
Madam Morrible.
Various members of the Gale Force, each one looking worse off than the last.
(He allows himself some small satisfaction at that as the words from Morrible’s announcement ring in his head).
A man in a long, green jacket.
And —
Galinda — Glinda, he corrects himself — who runs into his arms the moment she sees him, sobbing, inconsolable, and for a moment, he imagines the worst.
She’s dead.
He’s convinced of it deep in his heart as Glinda sobs, her fingers clutching tightly to his shirt, her tears soaking into his skin, her body trembling against his.
She’s dead, and I never … I didn’t…
He swallows thickly, blinks away the tears in his own eyes, and winds an arm around Glinda’s shoulders as his gaze roams the various faces in the room, all deeply serious, exhausted, calculating.
His eyes land finally on Morrible, and he feels fire within his veins as he remembers her words, the words that had spurred him into action, finally, finally, for the first time in his entire useless, wasted life.
What had he been living for, anyway?
Parties?
Sex?
Dancing?
It’s a cruel twist of fate that he finds something that makes him feel alive for the first time only to have it snatched mercilessly from between his fingers before he could even begin to fathom holding on tighter.
He feels like he could be blown over by a feather as Morrible studies him, her lips twisted into a frown.
He hadn’t known what to expect when he got here, but this, her, standing there while Elphaba is nowhere to be found, was not it.
“Where is she?” he murmurs, his hands sliding to grip Glinda’s shoulders, pushing her away just far enough to see her eyes. “Where is Elphaba?”
Glinda opens her mouth to speak but another sob cuts her off, and Fiyero sees visions of green skin, black fabric, blood…
“She’s a traitor,” Madam Morrible announces, her voice firm and deep as she glides over to where Fiyero is standing, his inconsolable girlfriend in his arms. “She stole the Grimmerie and mutilated the monkeys.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Fiyero says, shocking even himself with the steadiness of his voice despite the way he feels like he’s collapsing in on himself. “I asked, where is she?”
Madam Morrible looks at him as if he’s something particularly disgusting that she’s stepped in, but she doesn’t have a chance to verbally eviscerate him before Glinda finds her voice.
“She… she’s gone,” she stutters, and, well…
Fiyero had known, deep down.
But to have it confirmed —
“Oh,” he whispers, his throat thick and his eyes hot.
Oh.
He feels the ghost of her fingers brushing across his as she’d taken the poppy he’d held out to her, and he regrets as he realizes that oh, oh god, she’s gone, that he wants — wanted — to give her far more than that single flower.
He’ll never have the chance, now.
“Come with us,” Madam Morrible murmurs, pressing a hand to the back of Glinda’s shoulders to guide them both deeper into the palace. “We have much to do now. No use dwelling.”
Fiyero’s feet move, but his mind… his mind stays in that clearing with her, the cub, and the feeling of being seen for the first time in his entire life.
___________________
She’s not dead, but it turns out, in the weeks and months that follow, that this reality, the reality in which she’s not dead but instead somewhere out there — alone, hunted, hated — is so much worse.
He wakes up every morning in the Emerald Palace, dons a uniform that makes him hate himself in a way he never had while dancing through life, and pretends.
He pretends that he, too, believes the lies about her.
He convinces everyone that he wants to find her, not because of his own selfish desires, but to punish her.
He smiles at Glinda.
He plays the role of doting boyfriend to the emotionally distraught heroine of the tale Madam Morrible weaves with her wicked lies.
He pretends and he regrets and he plans.
He’s going to find her, no matter how long it takes.
Weeks.
Months.
Years.
He’s going to find her and help clear her name because he doesn’t believe that she’s evil.
He doesn’t believe that she’s wicked.
He hears the story Glinda tells him, different from Morrible’s, and he hates her, just a little bit, because she’d just stood there.
He’s not mad that Glinda didn’t go with Elphaba, though in his weaker moments he’s yelled those words at her despite not knowing if he would have had the courage, either, if he’d been in her place.
Instead he’s mad because, after everything, she’d stayed.
You stayed, too, he reminds himself, and then he throws himself harder into training, into drills, into searches and hunts.
He follows his Captain everywhere he leads, chasing Elphaba’s always cold trails, hoping against hope that she’s never there, that she is there, that he can see her and know she’s alive.
But she never is, and he never does, and he doesn’t know.
And at the end of it all, he comes back to a glimmering palace full of lies and fake smiles and love that isn’t love.
Because he loves Glinda, he does.
But he isn’t in love with her and he never has been.
Maybe in a different world, he thinks, he could be.
In a world where he hadn’t run into Elphaba in the woods that night.
A world where he didn’t look at her and see her conviction and feel, for the first time, that he could care about something other than himself, too.
He was a goner from that moment in the clearing, he knows, because no one had ever seen him before, truly seen him, and then stayed anyway.
He wants to stay for her, too, but he can’t find her and it drives him a little more insane each and every day.
Every public appearance.
Every party.
Every night in Glinda’s room, as few and far between as they are.
He goes through the motions and searches and plans and hopes.
___________________
The thing about hope, though, is that it’s hard to hold onto.
Time passes.
A year.
Two.
The days blur together, the parties, the forced smiles, the lies.
Some days Fiyero doesn’t know what to believe, who to believe.
Some days, he doesn’t even know who he is.
He grows frustrated, angry with himself.
With Elphaba.
With Glinda.
He yells at her, sometimes, and he hates himself when he sees the sadness in her eyes, sadness that he’s caused.
“I have to find her, Glin!”
Today is no different.
They’d followed another anonymous tip to yet another dead end, and Fiyero had stomped into Glinda’s sitting room and started yelling before he’d even changed out of his Gale Force uniform.
They’re deep into a well worn argument now, and though Fiyero already knows how it will end, already has a bitter taste in his mouth from fighting and yelling to no avail, he can’t stop himself.
He paces, a shaking hand brushing through his already disheveled hair.
“You just don’t fucking understand.”
Glinda stiffens.
“I want to find her, too, Fiyero! I was her friend first, you know!”
Anger wells up within his chest and he doesn’t even try to mince his words.
He isn’t sure he can, at this point.
“Were you? Were you really her friend? Or was it all just an act to show how good you are? Befriending the green girl? Because when it came down to it, you betrayed her too, Glinda. You repeat their-their lies about her, dragging her name through the mud, while enjoying balls and dresses and popularity. All while she’s out there, alone, facing Oz knows what! While the whole world hates her! While we hunt for her, to find her, to torture her, to kill her. Do you realize what they will do if we catch her, Glin? Do you know what it’s like to go out there every day wanting so desperately to find her but also not because the moment we do, her life is over? Do you!?”
Glinda sniffles as tears trail slowly down her face, and Fiyero hates himself.
“You know that I don’t,” she whispers.
Fiyero watches, his chest heaving with emotion, his face wet with tears he doesn’t even remember beginning to cry.
“No, you don’t,” he whispers, acid lacing his voice as he hisses the words past an aching throat, words he knows are filtering through his frustration and desperation and coming out much harsher than he intends. “You don’t. You don’t! You sit here in your pretty dresses surrounded by your servants and show public support for laws that go against everything Elphaba was trying to fight against!”
Glinda watches him, eyes wide and wet.
And the thing is, Fiyero knows some of the things he’s saying are true.
Glinda is not faultless in this.
But he’s saying it all the wrong way, his words sharp and meant to hurt so that someone else suffers the way he’s suffering.
He’s tired of hurting so much while everyone else celebrates.
“Fiyero, you know that’s not fair,” she whispers, voice breaking.
He stands tall and glares at her, and he knows that she’s not the true object of his anger but she’s all he has because he can’t say any of this, show any of this, to anyone else or they’ll kill him, too.
“You’re no better than Morrible,” he hisses, and then he turns and stalks out.
He goes straight back to the training grounds and runs and runs and runs until his feet bleed but when he falls into bed hours later, he still feels like shit.
He still misses her.
And all he’s accomplished with his words is to hurt the one person he has left who sees even a fraction of his true self.
She doesn’t see enough, though.
No one else ever has.
Not even his fucking parents.
No one but her.
He sleeps like shit that night and apologizes in the morning, but none of it matters.
Nothing matters anymore.
Nothing except —
___________________
“Elphaba!”
He sees her for the first time in eight hundred sixty seven days, and he nearly gives the whole thing away, then.
He reaches for her.
His fingers brush her skin.
She gasps, and he does, too, and then it’s over and she’s gone, the end of her broom shoved roughly into his stomach to get him to tumble off of the small cliff they’d been standing on so that she can fly away from those who want to kill her.
Fiyero lands hard on his ass and doesn’t even care that all of the Gale Force is staring at him, yelling, berating him for letting her get away.
He doesn’t care that his Captain whacks him upside the head with his pistol hard enough to make him see stars.
“You Ozdamn idiot,” he growls.
Fiyero barely hears him, though, because …
“She’s alive.”
The words are whispered breathlessly and do absolutely nothing to endear his Captain to him.
He’s still reeling from a second hit to the head when Feldspur trots up and nudges him until he climbs into the saddle that’s more for show than anything.
He throws up as they trot back to the palace and he knows he likely has a concussion but he doesn’t even care because she’s alive.
Glinda fusses over him that night and demands he stay with her so she can watch over him and why does he even have his own quarters anymore, honestly.
“She’s alive,” he says in lieu of an answer, and Glinda falls silent.
She makes sure he’s okay, waking him every few hours, but other than that, she doesn’t touch him at all that night.
He feels relieved and like an asshole all at once, but it’s all inconsequential because she’s alive.
She’s alive, and he has to find her.
___________________
His captain is killed, not by Elphaba thankfully, because as much as the man was an asshole, he knows she would never forgive herself if she were to end someone’s life.
Instead he’s taken out by a large Animal who has lost their ability to speak, their ability to reason and think and feel, an animal who is chained up and whipped on the regular, and Fiyero thinks it’s some kind of cosmic karma that his Captain is stomped to death by the Animal, but at the same time he feels bad because the Animal hadn’t meant to, he’d just been so much bigger and his Captain had been hurting him and he’d reacted on instinct.
Regardless, though, there’s suddenly a position open that he desperately wants because if he’s Captain, he gets to lead the Gale Force.
He gets to give the orders.
He can protect Elphaba better that way.
He can keep them off of her trail, will be the first to receive news, tips, rumors.
He trains harder than he ever has.
He sees Glinda less and less, and not being around her lessens the shame he feels for not being able to love her the way she wants him to.
It’s not even that she is in love with him, he doesn’t think.
It’s more that he’s perfect and she’s perfect and so they belong together, obviously.
If only she realized how truly imperfect he is.
How flawed.
How human.
But she never has.
___________________
He’s promoted to Captain of the Gale Force and engaged to Glinda and he feels sick with how far out of control this has all gotten.
He feels sick that he’s used her, because if he hadn’t stayed with her, if he hadn’t kept up the facade of being in love with her, there’s no way Morrible would have moved him through the ranks of the Gale Force so fast.
She would have sent him packing back to the Vinkus in the blink of an eye and he never would have had the chance to save the woman he lo—
To save Elphaba.
So.
He lied, too.
He pretended and smiled and used her all while rationing food, money, anything he thought would be helpful if he were to ever find Elphaba.
He’d done all the things he accused Glinda of and he hates himself but not nearly as much as he loves Elphaba.
Yes, loves.
He loves her, or the idea of her, at least.
He’s not sure.
He knew her for such a short amount of time at Shiz, but does time really matter when someone sees who you truly are?
When they glimpse past the facade you’d perfected and touch your very soul?
No.
Time is irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter if he knew her for months or weeks or days or seconds — she’s imprinted herself on his heart and he is hopelessly, wholly, irreversibly, unconditionally in love with her.
___________________
He stands at the alter and watches as Glinda walks toward him.
He smiles, because she’s beautiful.
He smiles, because she’s his friend.
But then his smile fades because oh Oz, he feels sick to his stomach.
This isn’t what he wants.
You know me. I’m always happy.
Except he isn’t, and he wasn’t, and he rarely in his life ever has been.
He feels a brief moment of panic when he realizes that he’s about to tie himself to Glinda, officially and legally and eternally, and he feels like he’s going to throw up, but—
He’s saved by a stampede of animals and he has a brief moment of relief before he realizes what is happening.
Who is making it happen.
And he runs without a second thought.
___________________
“I’m going with her.”
The words are torn from his throat, thick and aching, his whole body humming with anticipation and fear and excitement and panic.
Three years.
Three goddamn years.
Oh Oz, he’s going to throw up.
But then her hand is in his and they’re running and she’s leading him through the palace and then the woods and into her hideout.
She doesn’t let go of his hand until they’re inside and the air is thick and the red of the poppy he’d given her so long ago is shining like a beacon to him, a physical manifestation of her feelings.
Her feelings for him!
It’s almost too much to bear.
“Elphaba,” he whispers, his heart laid bare before her, hers, always hers.
She smiles and reaches for him and he goes willingly, excitedly, perfectly into her arms.
He presses his love for her into her skin, his lips hot and wet as he drags them down her neck, coaxing little noises from her that he drinks down, memorizes, places in a special part of his heart so he never forgets them.
“Yero,” she whispers, and he grins as she drops her cloak off of her shoulders, baring more beautiful green skin to her.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs for the second time, lips returning to hers so that she can’t refute his words. He kisses her slowly, deeply, pouring all of the love and frustration and desperation and longing of the past three years into her mouth as he holds her against him.
You’re alive, he thinks, a little hysterically.
There are things he regrets in life. Enough that he could fill a book, two even. There are long stretches of the past three years he’s not proud of, the things he’d done, things he’d said, lies he’d whispered and actions he wishes he could take back.
But in the circle of her arms, as she lowers them into her makeshift bed, he finds that he can’t regret any of it because it had led him to here, now, with her, and that was the whole point, wasn’t it?
Every action, every word, every lie and frustration was worth it, because it led him to her.
And as long as she’s his, as long as she’s by his side, he thinks he could do anything, weather any storm.
“As long as you’re mine,” he whispers, and then he covers her body with his and neither of them speak for a long, long time.